A talk on ‘The Narrative of Forced Conversion in Pakistan’
IPS Research Officer Dr Sufi Ghulam Hussain was invited by the Center for Contemporary South Asia Watson Institute, and Institute of International and Public Affairs, Brown University, USA. to deliver a talk on the Narrative of Forced Conversion in Pakistan on March 19, 2021.
The purpose of the talk was to bring into light the alternative discourse on faith conversions in Pakistan.
Based on his two-year research on non-Muslim communities in Sindh, Hussain explained the nature of conversion in Pakistan by comparing the cases in Pakistan with that of India. He said that the trajectory of conversion to Islam in South Asian and across the word is the same: Non-Muslim girls convert to Islam so that they can marry.
He termed the cry of forced conversions being politically motivated and carried on by the donor-driven foreign-funded rights activists.
Hussain argued that the false alarm raised by NGO-activists shows that the secular spaces are no more neutral, and have assumed a sectarian posture as they compete with the non-secular and religious segments of society.
He urged for creating meta-secular spaces where both the secular and non-secular and religious aspects of the society could be judicially contemplated for the common good of the society.
